PREVIOUS WORK

DEEP in the Sacred Forest lurks a threat. Bella and her grey squirrel army are circling, ready to enslave once and for all the resistant red squirrels and squash the last remnants of their way of life.

For long enough, all the animals of the forest have been ruled by the new Grey Way, controlled by laws based on endless mountains of paper and contrived double-speak only the greys can understand.

Now from among the outnumbered but defiant red squirrels, a brave new hero has emerged. With Big Red as their leader, the Reds fight back to save their long-cherished freedoms and their ancient constitution, the law of Acorna Corona. And to do this, they will need to call upon the legendary Knights of the Golden Acorn.

A gripping modern fairy-tale about losses of freedom and liberty, written in the spirit of Animal Farm and Watership Down.”

Note: I published under the name of Red Squirrel Publishing, swiftly changing it to Red Terrier Publishing on receipt of a stern letter from the longer-established and infinitely more prestigious Red Squirrel Publishing. You live and learn.

IF you look very carefully through a small window in the rear of Keswick Natural History Museum on a very bright day, you can make out the form of a remarkable exhibit. Although now faced and dusty and frozen in time in a glass display cabinet, you can clearly see stripes on its fur.

Upon closer examination, you might be forgiven for thinking that this creature was a cross between a tiger, a kangaroo and a wild dog. If you look closer still, you can see the neat criss-cross stitching that holds its skin together, and in some places the faint claret remnants of its own blood.

It is fixed in an attitude of controlled anguish, its huge head tilted tragically to one side, crouching low on its muscular legs amongst the fake flora and fauna of Australasia. Its erect moth-eaten ears are perked as if listening back through time to the sound of its tormentors. Its long cat-like tail, thick at its base and tapering towards its end, has been arranged in a position that could only have been contrived by man.”